


The Art of Argument

by savagescribbles (timeandcelery)



Category: Girl Genius
Genre: Background Poly, Bickering, Lab Sex, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-14
Updated: 2013-07-14
Packaged: 2017-12-20 03:59:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/882689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/timeandcelery/pseuds/savagescribbles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first few times they slept together were experiments. This? This is a habit, and maybe, without quite realizing it, they’ve started sharing each other too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Art of Argument

**Author's Note:**

> Written a few months ago for the [kinkmeme](http://girlgeniuskinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/492.html?thread=17644#cmt17644), edited before posting. Nebulous future OT3verse, because... is anything I write not in some nebulous future OT3verse?

Not even Tarvek had planned for this, for the two of them sharing Agatha (he hates calling it that, _sharing_ , like she’s something to be portioned out between the two of them when it’s nothing of the sort) to turn into something else. 

There’s the friendship they rebuilt, piece by piece in fire and lightning and blood and more solid than ever by now, and Tarvek knows what to do with that. It's as hard to imagine his life without Gil as it is to imagine it without Agatha, and that thought has almost stopped scaring him. But now there’s something less easy to name. The first few times they slept together were experiments. This? This is a habit, and maybe, without quite realizing it, they’ve started sharing each other too. 

They keep finding themselves together, half-clothed and pushed against walls or pinned to tables or (once, and rather memorably) with Gil strapped firmly to a slab. They still don’t talk about it, and it keeps going, and when Gil wanders into Tarvek’s lab with a stack of notes and cuffs him on the shoulder in passing, he barely looks up from the hydraulic joint he’s spent all afternoon redesigning.

“Agatha sent her work on the consciousness thing along,” he says, dropping the notes down on the only empty space he can find. 

“Mm," says Tarvek, adjusting the angle on his compass. "Tell her thanks, will you?”

“Right, because you won’t see her four more times today?”

Tarvek briefly considers shoving him, but settles for rolling his eyes instead. “Not the point, Wulfenbach.”

“Well, then,” Gil drawls, planting his hands on either side of Tarvek to lean over him, “what is the point?”

Tipping his head back, he gives Gil a flat, if upside-down, look. “The point is that you’re in my light.” Gil smirks, and Tarvek leans forward again. “Funny, did you know that you can’t see anything when there’s a great hulking mass of oaf in your way?”

“Not that you were doing much in the first place, lazybones.”

“Lazybones? Were you even up before noon?”

“Ten-thirty!” 

Sighing more dramatically than the situation actually calls for, Tarvek sets down his tools and stands up to examine the notes. He hasn’t taken more than a step when Gil steps in front of him and smirks and -- oh.

“You could have just _asked_ , you know,” says Tarvek. His voice is remarkably level, considering that there is currently a hand planted over half his posterior. And that it shows no signs of moving, and is in fact sort of... cupping. “You really could have.”

Gil shrugs and -- damn the bastard -- grins at him. “It’s more fun this way, though.”

Tarvek feels his eyelid twitch. Also other things. “Wulfenbach."

"Yes?"

"Would you remove your hand from my ass?”

“Say please.”

He grits his teeth. “Would you _please_ remove your hand from my ass?”

Gil’s grin gets wider. “Nope.”

Tarvek gives an exaggerated sigh: so this is the game they’re playing today. “Libertine filth. And it’s not like you can be trusted to listen to reason, anyway.” 

“What do you mean, can’t be trusted to -- gh!” Gil cuts himself off with a spluttering sound as Tarvek shoves a hand down the front of his trousers.

If you can’t beat them... find another way. And this one seems to be quite promising, if the way Gil is rocking his hips against his hand is any indication. As he palms him through his drawers and walks him back toward the wall, all projects that do not finish with him pinned against the nearest flat surface forgotten, he puts his mouth to Gil’s ear and hisses. “I mean that, since you persist.” He grinds the heel of his hand forward and is rewarded by a squeak and a sharp pain as Gil digs his fingers into his hips. “In acting.” Gil tips his own head down to press his lips against the pulse of Tarvek’s throat, mouthing up toward his jaw. “Like this.” It’s becoming difficult to concentrate, especially when Gil finds the spot he knows makes him squirm and starts up a languid sucking. 

He tries a different tactic, freeing his hand -- and getting a useless whine from Gil while he’s at it -- and working at the buttons on Gil's shirt, trying to regain his own breath. “Since you persist in acting like this,” he repeats, unable to keep his voice entirely level or stop the roll of his hips against Gil’s, “I’m simply going to have to teach you a lesson.”

Gil laughs, a deep throaty chuckle that rumbles against his neck and makes him shiver. “That’s a good one. You teach me a lesson?”

Tarvek pushes Gil’s shirt from his shoulders, and Gil lifts his hands enough to let it fall to the ground. “Oh?” He skims his hands down the broad expanse of Gil’s back. He’ll save the nails for later.

Gil makes a low appreciative sound and grabs at Tarvek’s ass again. “You’re acting like this isn’t going to end with you bent over this table.” He squeezes, and Tarvek can’t bite back his groan. He wishes he had, because when Gil speaks again, the smugness is dripping from his words. “Who’s the libertine now?”

“Shut up.”

“Wouldn’t you like me to?” Gil pulls them together, pushes a thigh in between Tarvek’s, and grinds. "Want to make me?"

Words are starting to fail Tarvek as he rolls his hips back. He bites down on Gil’s earlobe instead, and he’s rewarded with a throaty little noise that he likes enough to try for again. And then Gil has a hand in his hair and is kissing him furiously, almost angrily, holding his head in place and nipping at his lower lip, meeting Tarvek’s tongue with a startling fierceness.

They lose themselves to it for a while, their fight forgotten in favor of this, lips on lips and hands in hair and fingers digging into flesh, bodies rocking into one another in friction and heat. When they break apart, they’re both gasping, all dark eyes and mussed hair and swollen lips and the pale crescents of fingernails dented into their skin. Tarvek’s shirt is rucked up and rumpled, with Gil’s hands beneath it. His trousers are low and crooked on his hips, and his coat is long gone.

He finds it hard to care.

“Move,” Tarvek gasps, and he presses the flats of his hands against Gil’s shoulders and walks them both back, back, until Gil hits the wall next to one of the benches. The scant inch difference in their heights seems to vanish completely as Tarvek draws himself up and bears forward, pinning Gil to the wall. 

His hands come up and close on Tarvek’s wrists, but other than that, he doesn’t protest, doesn’t move -- just holds his gaze as he tries to catch his breath, not even trying to hide the hunger in his eyes.

The stare is almost painfully intense, and to avoid it Tarvek leans in, pressing himself against Gil, brushing his mouth against his ear. He relishes in the shiver that results. “What were you saying about teaching me a lesson, hmm?”

Gil’s hands tighten on Tarvek’s wrists. “Exactly what I meant.” 

“Which was?” 

He gives Tarvek a shove that nearly unbalances him, and he steps them both forward, away from the wall. “Clothes. Off,” he nearly growls, dropping his wrists abruptly.

“Eloquent, aren’t you?” Tarvek asks, but he starts in on the buttons of his shirt anyway. When he’s free of his clothes and has them relatively safely on the table, he heads off for the battered sofa in the corner. 

Gil follows close behind. “You’re the only person who’d have a couch in his lab,” he grumbles.

“And you’re complaining about it?” Tarvek pushes Gil into the couch, but as he lands, he catches Tarvek’s hand and drags him down. They scuffle, but in the end, Gil’s weight advantage means that he ends up on top, straddling Tarvek and looking far too pleased about that.

It’s not like Tarvek minds much. Especially when they fall together again, fighting as much as not, grinding fiercely and fervently, stealing kisses and bites and curses from each other’s mouths. They both know that the fight is a show, that they'd both be as happy to lose as to win, but they do it anyway, and neither of them wants to stop. and without Agatha there, neither of them have to.

They’re both half gone when the tiny fraction of Tarvek’s brain still capable of thoughts has one, and, breathing hard and raggedly, he pushes Gil away.

Gil reaches for him but stops himself and stares instead, all blown-dark eyes and tousled hair. “Tarvek, what--”

“On your back,” he orders, his voice hoarse and deep and Madder than he’d thought possible. If a reversal is what Gil wants, it's what he's going to get. “On your back. Now.”

“What--”

His voice positively crackles. He’s deep in the Madness Place, now; too far gone for arguments. “Lie down.” 

Gil does, and Tarvek follows, pushing him into the arm of the couch and settling himself between his legs. He draws it out, dragging his hands down Gil's torso until they hover at his hips, following his hands with his mouth. Gil makes a strangled sound when he realizes what’s happening, and he cuts off into a Spark-tinged desperate moan as Tarvek sinks his mouth around him and _sucks_.

Gil babbles the whole time, a stream of moans and oaths and incoherent garbled sounds and pleading as he digs a hand into Tarvek’s hair, and he stifles his own cry when he comes.

Tarvek pulls away, onto his elbows, and watches Gil's face as he recovers. He doesn't, however, expect Gil to grab for him so quickly and pull him up till they're both on their knees, tangled together. Tarvek arches into his touch without meaning to, and when Gil gets a hand around him he moans without trying to stop himself. Gil smiles and wraps his free arm around Tarvek's shoulder and draws him close against his chest. Tarvek is undone, unable do anything but moan as Gil works him off with a slow measured precision that leaves him trembling and gasping and finally whimpering against his shoulder before he’s done. 

He’s still catching his breath when Gil bumps their foreheads together and stands up, walking toward the table, and as he turns away Tarvek forces down the pang of disappointment. He couldn’t exactly expect him to stay, could he? Not here, not now.

He’s just getting to his feet to recollect his clothes when Gil comes padding back across the lab with his own handkerchief in hand. He catches him gently by the shoulder, pressing down, and Tarvek sits again. “Hey. Where’re you going?”

"Uh," says Tarvek. Words are still a bit difficult, but that's okay, because Gil sits down next to him and puts the handkerchief to use. He's attentive and gentle and Tarvek knows he's being more careful than he would be with himself. It's more of that strange tenderness, more frequent lately, that scares him a little. When Gil's finished, he eases both of them down onto the couch. Tarvek follows his lead, letting himself be moved and positioned and tucked into place by still-careful hands. He's not surprised, then, when Gil curls against his back, fitting himself there snugly. "Oaf,” says Tarvek fondly as Gil wraps his arms around his shoulders.

“Fop,” says Gil, nuzzling at his neck.


End file.
